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Explain Something We Don't Know

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Eylrid

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"Everyone you meet knows something you don't." - Bill Nye

I thought this might be a good way to find out how many real people we have here, as opposed to spammers, and maybe spark some conversation: Give us a good explanation (two paragraphs?) of something we probably don't know.

Here's mine: Trains use air brakes, but they kind of work backwards from how you might expect. Instead of the brakes being applied when the pressure in the brake line goes up, they are applied when the pressure drops. This is a failsafe in case the brake line gets cut.

Each car in the train has an air tank that gets filled from the brake line and a special valve. If the pressure in the brake line drops the valve opens a line from the tank to the brakes, engaging the breaks and slowing the train. There is a control valve in the engine that the engineer can use to let a little air out, slowing the train a bit; let it all out, putting on full brakes; or anything inbetween.

Posted on October 19, 2014 at 8:19 PM

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  Political authority is an illusion.

  The basis for our liberal democracies is a myth that lives in your head with no notion of there being anything objective about it at all. You will hear grand talk of the 'social contract', or 'the will of the people' as a form of grounding for the Political authority, but these things are figments of the mind that ultimately you have no duty to.

  Only slaves are born in to contract, any other form of contract comes in to being through voluntary agreement and is only binding in so far as both sides stick to the agreed upon terms, when that does not happen the contract is void. Firstly, I never agreed to anything and secondly, when challenged a government will say it has no obligation to fulfil its side of the contract such as during a riot when the police deem it too dangerous to protect you.

  As for the 'will of the people' LOL

  When a politician says 'your country is proud of you' what he is really saying is I have fooled you in to doing something I wanted you to do that benefits me and my friends at your cost.

  I am not really a fan of Bill Nye either. Scientific truths can not tell you anything objective either, they are guided by the scientists themselves and really ought not to be taken too seriously.

  Science can tell us of the superiority of race, bind that with a belief in your 'country' and you have a whole lot of morons trying to kill each for a dumb idea. Marx's communism was scientific aka bullshit.

  What people do not seem to understand is that scientific truths are thought up, tested and interpreted by the scientists themselves, a blind faith in science is as dumb as a blind faith in your country, religion etc.

  Posted on October 20, 2014 at 3:33 AM
  Last Edited: October 20, 2014 at 7:18 PM
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  @page What people do not seem to understand is that scientific truths are thought up, tested and interpreted by the scientists themselves, a blind faith in science is as dumb as a blind faith in your country, religion etc.

  The only reason we are even able to have this conversation is because of science. Without science we wouldn't have computers and we wouldn't have the internet. We wouldn't even have control over electricity. We certainly wouldn't have Bitcoin.

  All humans are biased, and that includes scientists. But the scientific method is a process designed to cut through that bias as much as possible. Something is not considered scientifically valid unless it has been reproduced and checked by disparate people. It is similar to the blockchain in that way. Each new discovery is verified and confirmed by anyone interested, who has the skills to do so, before being built on.

  Science isn't perfect and sometimes it makes mistakes, as all human endeavors do, but it's pretty good at correcting those mistakes.

  The information gained from science can be use for good or evil. Einstein's theory of relativity led to both the atomic bomb and the ability to better understand and explore space. What the information is used for doesn't change the fact that the scientific method is a powerful and reliable method to learn about and control the world we live in.

  Posted on October 20, 2014 at 10:17 AM
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  @eylrid

  When you suppose you are dealing with truths, as scientists do, that can only be contained within your knowledge and there's a belief in the methodology itself, that leaves an almost infinite possibilities for you not to be anywhere even close to an absolute truth, never mind knowing if you are even working in the right direction.

  As an example, we can not say with any definitive certainty that Einstein is anywhere closer to the truth than Newton. Their laws and theories are useful as descriptive tools rather than actually telling us what anything really is.

  Posted on October 20, 2014 at 7:16 PM
  Last Edited: October 21, 2014 at 3:51 PM
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